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Facebook's AI is 'getting close' to beating humans at Go

Facebook has taught its artificial intelligence how to beat humans at the Chinese board game Go.

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The AI isn't quite at the stage where it is able to beat humans at the game, which sees players try to capture more territory than their opponent, but Facebook said it was "getting close". "In the past six months we've built an AI that can make moves in as fast as 0.1 seconds and still be as good as previous systems that took years to build," wrote CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

He added that Facebook's approach to tackling the game involved a "search-based approach that models every possible move" along with a system that matches patterns of movements.

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AI researchers have tried to compete with humans at the game for the last 20 years, Zuckerberg said. "Go's high branching factor makes traditional search techniques ineffective, even on leading-edge hardware, and Go's evaluation function could change drastically with one stone change," explained Yuandong Tian, Facebook's lead researcher on the game.

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Google-owned Deep Mind, which has previously tackled playing other AI games, is also thought to have almost solved how to beat humans at Go.

2016 looks set to be a big year for Zuckerberg and AI: in January he revealed his New Year's resolution was be to build an AI-powered robot butler like Tony Stark's 'Jarvis' in Iron Man.